Sam meets Guy's family and teaches Guy a valuable lesson... and reveals a shocking secret about his family.
Tropes appearing in "House"
- Actor Allusion: Stephen Tobolowsky voices an old high school friend of Guy's who embarrasses him, not unlike Tobolowsky's character "Needlenose" Ned Ryerson does to Phil Connors in Groundhog Day.
- A Hero to His Hometown: Guy is still popular among the locals in his hometown, as he was very accomplished as a young man. Guy hates it, as it reminds him of what a failure he is as an adult.
- Anti Climactic Parent: A very minor example. Anytime Guy's parents were brought up in episodes before this one, he was very evasive about them and in this one, he was trying his hardest to avoid them, so it was easy to assume that his parents are probably very abusive or emotionally distant. They finally show up in this episode and... they turn out to be very loving and supportive people. It's just that Guy feels bad around his family because everyone is much more accomplished than him and they can be a bit Innocently Insensitive at times.
- Apologetic Attacker: Gluntz shakes down a food stand worker for information about Sam, then apologizes to him and orders a shake over the loudspeaker.
- Bait-and-Switch: The way Guy talks about his family, it sounds as though they belittle and abuse him for being a failure. As it turns out, they're all extremely loving and supportive and Guy just feels inferior to all of their success.
- Big Fancy House: Guy's family lives in one of these.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Gluntz tells McWinkle that she figured out that they could track Sam by following his every order of green eggs and ham three episodes ago.
- Breather Episode: "House" trades action for drama.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: As much as a goofball as she is, even Gluntz is smart enough to notice how Sam leaves a trail of orders of green eggs and ham for her and McWinkle to follow long before he does.
- Chekhov's Gun: The hotel room which Mr. Jenkins destroyed in "Car" ends up costing Guy his two-million "frequent lodger" points when he and Sam try to stay at another location.
- Cerebus Retcon: Sam's love for green eggs and ham, out of all things, gets this - turns out he loves them so much because his mother made them for breakfast for him and that's the only thing he remembers about her. He keeps ordering them because he is hoping that they will eventually lead him back to her.
- Cool Big Bro: While Guy's big brothers do tease him and one another, it's clearly in a loving way.
- Cool Uncle: Guy's nieces and nephews all view him as such.
- Evil All Along: Sam, out of all people, turns out to be the real dragon working for Snerz.
- Foreshadowing: When McWinkle realizes that the Goat is after Sam, he says, shocked, "Someone's been replaced." Why doesn't he just say "We've been replaced"? Because they haven't.
- Former Teen Rebel: It turns out that Guy had a rebellious phase where he looked like a Quincy punk.
- Good Parents: Guy's parents and, indeed, his entire extended family are not only supportive but enthusiastic about his ambitions to become an inventor. Unfortunately, Guy's deep-seated insecurities about his failures as an adult when compared to how successful the rest of his family are makes him think it's all just condescending pity. He grows to appreciate them more after a conversation with Sam.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Guy only thinks himself a total failure because he's jealous of everything the rest of his family has accomplished.
- Late to the Realization: According to Gluntz, McWinkle should have realized that they could track Sam by following his trail of green eggs and ham which he orders everywhere he goes "three episodes ago."
- Literal Metaphor: All of the Am-Is' careers: his father is a breadwinner (he wins loaves of bread in olympic sports), his mother is a home maker (she builds houses with her bare hands) and his grandfather literally moves mountains.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The normally boisterous and jokey Sam is rendered soft-spoken and weepy when telling Guy about his mother.
- Parental Abandonment: Sam reveals to Guy that his mom left him at an orphanage and he's been trying to find her ever since so that he could ask why she did it.
- The Reveal: Two big ones pertaining to Sam:
- He made all of those stories about his mother up. He was actually left at an orphanage when he was very young and the only thing he remembers about his mother is that she made him breakfast - green eggs and ham.
- He's actually an animal smuggler who has been working for Snerz all this time.
- Secret Handshake: Performing one of these on a mechanical hand is required to get into Guy's treehouse.
- Shout-Out
- Being an expy of Del Griffith, it makes sense that Sam, like Del, would eventually confess that the woman he's most loyal to and whom he'd been building up throughout the story thus far isn't actually in his life any more (in this case, a mother who abandoned him rather than a deceased wife). The episode also involves Guy, the Neil Page to Sam's Del, bringing his homeless drifter friend back to his family's Big Fancy House, as Neil does at the end of Planes..., though in this case, it's less a gesture of kindness and more begrudging. The scene of them trying and failing to pay for a hotel room with the Goat's credit card also mirrors the scene in which Neil tries to pay for a hotel room with the melted remains of his credit cards after saving them from a burning car.
- Guy's grandfather literally moving mountains is yet another reference to Dr. Seuss's final book, Oh, The Places You'll Go! the second-to-last line of which is "KID, YOU'LL MOVE MOUNTAINS!"
- String Theory: Used by the BADGUYS to track Sam's every order of green eggs and ham.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: As a child, Guy was much more enthusiastic, happy-go-lucky and confident. However, after experiencing one failure after another as an adult, he turned into the surly man you see in the show.Guy: I was happier as a child.
- Wham Episode: This episode reveals that Sam was lying about his mother and more importantly, that he was actually The Dragon to Snerz all this time.
- Wham Line: Two, both coming from Sam:
- First one comes in the tent scene:
Sam: I know exactly how lucky you are, because... I never had a family. I made it all up. [...] I never told anybody this before, but when I was very little my mom left me at an orphanage. It's always just been me.- The second one comes near the end - Sam goes into Guy's house, picks up the phone, it cuts to Snerz and...
Sam: It's me. You'll have the Chickeraffe on schedule as promised, Mr. Snerz. - Wham Shot: The episode ends with Sam making a phone call... to Snerz.
- You Are Fat: As Guy is greeted by his family, one of them can be heard commenting "You got a little chubby there."
